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colonies. New England was the poorest region, and the South was the richest. Colonial per capita incomes rose only very slowly, and slowly for five reasons: productivity growth was slow; population in the low-income (but subsistence-plus) frontier grew much faster than that in the high-income coastal
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- Peter H. Lindert, Jeffrey G. Williamson
- 46
- 2015
Mar 23, 2015 · New data now allow conjectures on the levels of real and nominal incomes in the 13 American colonies. New England was the poorest region, and the South was the richest.
- Peter H. Lindert, Jeffrey G. Williamson
- 2015
Which colonies were richest? How did income levels and their distribution change between the mid-seventeenth century and the eve of the Revolution? How did income levels and their distribution compare with those in Britain? This article works from both the product and income side of the accounting balance sheet.
New data now allow conjectures on the levels of real and nominal incomes in the thirteen American colonies. New England was the poorest region, and the South was the richest.
- Peter H. Lindert, Jeffrey G. Williamson
- 2015
- In 1774, colonial Americans had the highest standard of living on earth. AVG. ANNUAL INCOME. £13.85. According to historian Alice Hansen Jones, Americans at the end of the colonial era averaged an annual income of £13.85, which was the highest in the western world.
- The average tax rate in colonial America was between 1 and 1.5% U.S. TAX RATE. 1-1.5% Colonial and Early Americans paid a very low tax rate, both by modern and contemporary standards.
- The Depression of the 1780s was as bad as the Great Depression. Between 1774 and 1789, the American economy (GDP per capita) shrank by close to 30 percent.
- The US’s largest European trading partners in the late 1790s were the German city-states of Hamburg and Bremen. American trade with the Hanseatic city-states of Hamburg and Bremen boomed with upon the outbreak of the Napoleonic Wars.
We also find that the South was initially much richer than the North on the eve of Revolution, but then suffered a severe reversal of fortune, so that by 1840 its white population was already poorer than free Northerners.
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Among the mainland colonies, the white southerners were the richest, on average, with about twice the wealth of New England or the Middle Atlantic region. If we include the West Indies as one of the colonial areas, then its thriving sugar industry made it the wealthiest.
